The East Deck Motel and Selected Poetry

By Theodore M. Wandzilak, MD

In many ways The East Deck Motel and Selected Poetry is a poetic memoir. The poetry within this book is derived from personal life experiences over the past forty years. These experiences can roughly be separated into three chapters - as a young adult in Eastern Long Island, as a physician in middle life and then, later in life, as a father watching my children mature into young adults themselves. Through medical school and 30 years of private practice I have been confronted with life and death on a frequent basis. This time of my life provided me with a perspective of people perhaps not available to those outside of the medical community. My intent in writing this book is to show people life from an angle that they have not viewed before. This poetry is meant to be entertaining and in some ways informative. As a physician the seriousness of life confronts me on a regular basis and I have had to find ways to laugh at life in order to reach a comfortable balance. What is written here is a natural extension of my everyday life-the dark side of life is often reflected in a humorous way, and events that might at first appear joyful do not have a happy ending. This is a poetic memoir with an ironic twist.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Apr 5, 2016
• ISBN: 9781514467268

Theodore M. Wandzilak, MD

Theodore M. Wandzilak, MD, was born in New Hyde Park, New York. As a young man, he spent every summer in East Hampton and Montauk and returns to eastern Long Island regularly. He received his BA in chemistry from Adelphi University. During his undergraduate studies, he took a single beat poetry course, which influenced his style and philosophy of poetry throughout his life. He believes that poetry very simply stated can stimulate intense emotions or have profound meanings. He attended the University of Louisville Medical School and completed his residency in ophthalmology from the University of Louisville and the Kentucky Lions Eye Institute. Dr. Wandzilak has been in private practice in Louisville for the past thirty years.

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Copyright © 2016 by Theodore M. Wandzilak, M.D. 735583

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016904423

ISBN:   Softcover   978-1-5144-6727-5

Hardcover   978-1-5144-6728-2

EBook   978-1-5144-6726-8

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Rev. date: 04/23/2016

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Contents

Preface

Never Spoke

Quiet

Seven Years Later

Midnight in Moscow

Melancholia

A Partial Autobiography

The East Deck Motel

The Springs

Fireplace Road

Ditch Plains Trailer Park

Young Love

Distractions

Zurich

The Exit

Whatever Happened to Me

In Reverence of Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Elk

A Raindrop

The Stop Sign

A Routine

Across the Room

Joe

Leo

People

Insight

Paralyzed

A Somnambulant Voyage

Betrayal

London Fog

The Match

La Bella Vita

Years Passing By

Trout

Women vs. Men

Preface

As a chemistry major at Adelphi University in the early 1970s, I took a single course in beat poetry as a diversion from my major. Since that time, I became hooked on this genre of poetry. Perhaps it was because chemistry was so exacting and precise and beat poetry was just the opposite, often not adhering to standard syntax and punctuation. It seemed to produce a good balance in my life.

I was attracted to beat poetry for many reasons. Garrison Keillor, in his book Good Poems, described some of the principles of what he felt good poetry should entail. Keillor stated, Good poems tend to incorporate some story, some cadence or shadow of story. Keillor quoted Charles Bukowski: There is nothing wrong with poetry that is entertaining and easy to understand. Genius could be the ability to say a profound thing in a simple way. It seemed to me that beat poetry, for the most part, did tell a story and that